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Emily Dickinson
“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—”
manuscript, c. 1862

Documented source

Source
Autograph manuscript
Date
c. 1862
Wording
Matches Dickinson’s manuscriptEm-dashes and capital “Sky” intact. Later printings normalize the punctuation.

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), Amherst, Massachusetts · Fr 598 / J 632 (scholarly poem numbers) · first published 1896

Every quote here is traced to a documented source. How we verify →

About this line

Written around 1862, this is Dickinson at her most audacious. In a few short lines she sets the mind against the sky, then the sea, then the weight of God — and finds it wider, deeper, nearly the same. A claim about the sheer capacity of human consciousness, made without apology.

Why we carry this line

This one didn’t whisper. Your mind, wider than the sky — that’s a huge, almost cocky thing to claim, and she just says it flat out. I loved the nerve.

Objects carrying this line

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